Ben Carson: 'There Is a Fire Lit in Me to Save Our Country'

Dr. Ben Carson says he has "a fire" inside him to rescue the United States from ruin — and he's building a strong political network to lay the groundwork for a possible 2016 presidential run.

"There certainly is a fire lit in me to save our country. I don't know what my role will be in that. Only God knows that, but I'm certainly listening to the people," Carson said Wednesday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.

Carson, former head of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Children's Center, said if he does run, his agenda will move "toward things that help America, not toward things that help a political party."

He said he has been talking to groups of people nationwide about their vision of the United States and what they are willing to do to make it a better place.

"That's the key. What are you willing to do for it? Freedom is not free. It's not a spectator's sport. You have to roll your sleeves up. You have to get involved, otherwise you will lose it," Carson said.

The renowned surgeon, an African American conservative who has never held a political office, has been testing the waters of political support over the past year.

Carson also spoke about the shooting of a black youth by a white cop in Ferguson, Mo., and the subsequent rioting that has rocked the city of 21,000, saying he has been "very disappointed" with news coverage of the turmoil.

"I was hoping that maybe the news media could come to some kind of resolution among themselves and say, 'Can just three of us cover this hour and three of us the next hour?' because they're making this into a media circus," he said.

"That's attracting a lot of outside people who want to come in and get attention. We're finding out now that most of the looters are people from the outside.

"What we should be doing is looking at how we can use this to focus attention where it needs to be focused. We need to be thinking about Detroit, Chicago, New Orleans, Washington D.C., Philadelphia and places where tons of young men are being killed."

Carson said the rise of black on black crime has become a national crisis.

"How many black men were killed by police last year? 100. How many were killed by other black men? 5,000. That's 50 to 1. That's a crisis," he said.

"We need to be directing some attention to that. Perhaps, we can get some of these leaders who are so quick to fly in here to go to those cities and help address those issues.

"Because those are what's killing the community. Those are what's driving down the income. That's what's really creating frustration in a tinder-box situation."

On the subject of the video that shows beheading of American journalist James Foley by an ISIS executioner, Carson said he expected to see "a little more outrage to be honest with you" from The White House.

"This is an American citizen being beheaded," he said, urging President Barack Obama to adopt a hardline strategy to defeat the Islamic extremist group.

"They're not going away. We may be able to push them back for a little while, but they're just going to regroup and come back at us," Carson said.

"Unless we have an overall strategy for how we're going to eliminate that threat, we're just spitting in the ocean."

"If we were a lot more forceful and we had an actual plan, we would see some of the countries like Saudi Arabia actually willing to jump on board."